I'm here with LPGA Commissioner Molly Marcus Simon, and we're
going to have a discussion about everything with regard to
golf and the state of women's golf right now.
Molly, thank you so much for being with us on
CNBC.
Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here.
All right, so, Molly, there has been so much buzz.
We're here in Naples, FL right now because it is
the season ending Tour Championship.
Just how good do you feel about how this season
has evolved and the state of the women's Professional Golf
game?
Yeah, I mean we're having a season like never before.
I think that there's never been higher purses.
The players are have never made as much money as
they've made.
But most importantly, the golf has never been better.
I mean having Nellie Quarter win 7 times, Lydia Cole
make it into the Hall of Fame, every player on
the leaderboard is fantastic and able to win.
We have the 60 best players here this week playing
for, as you know, $4 million, which is the largest
prize in women's golf and really one of the largest
women's sports prizes ever.
And, you know, it means something.
This is a really big moment for women's sports to
have one woman walk away with $4 million from winning
this tournament.
This is a big week for us, for the LPGA
and for women's sports.
Now it's been interesting that the development of prize money
on the LPGA Tour, it has come along relatively quickly
in a short amount of time.
Not ten years ago, it was nowhere near what it's
like today, but just in the last few years, a
number of big corporate sponsors have stepped up, especially for
major championships and of course for the CME Group and
their LPGA Tour Championship.
What has the effort been like to try to get
more people involved so that you can promote higher payouts
and higher purses and bigger purses on the LPGA Tour?
Yeah, it's just three years ago, the tour was playing
for $70 million and this year we played for 126
million.
And next year we'll be even bigger.
And so I think it's just it's an effort from
everybody within the ecosystem of women's golf and the major
championships and the partners of the major championships from our
our regular season championships, everybody has said, listen, these are
the best players in the world.
We need to make an investment that matches that quality
of talent and the eyeballs are tremendous.
You know that the companies are not doing this as
a charity.
I mean, they're doing it because it promotes their brand
and associates them with the longest standing women's sports league
in the world or organization in the world, great hospitality
and golf, great client entertaining.
So it's really just come together and it's been really
a team effort from my team, my staff, you know,
our tournament operators, tournament partners who have great relationships with
their partners, the major championships, the golf governing bodies, everyone
coming together and saying, listen, this is the best players
in the world.
The 100 best players in the world should get paid
commensurate with their talent.
But again, the players look at it like I'm competing,
I'm the best in the world, I'm going out there
to win.
Obviously the money should match that because they're professional athletes.
But it really has been a team effort and the
growth has been amazing.
I mean 8080% growth in three years.
The players average that the 100 top players average earnings
has gone up from 575,000 in 2021 to this year.
It's going to be over $1,000,000, the average earnings of
the top 100 players, which is pretty remarkable.
We're going to have over 30 players make $1,000,000 playing
golf, not including their endorsement deals.
This is big stuff for women's sports.
I mean, this isn't happening in the whole ecosystem of
women's sports.
We've been around 75 years.
We've been building to this.
This has been the largest period of growth because the
world sees the value in our athletes.
So Speaking of you, you mentioned this idea of a
team approach.
You eventually mentioned this ecosystem idea.
The women's Professional Golf industry, if you will, is separate
in some ways, but also part of a broader ecosystem.
In women's sports overall, we've seen massive interest because of
folks like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese in women's basketball.
We've seen a huge, huge push to see all the
great talent that we see on the women's tennis side
of things.
How exactly?
And of course, women's soccer, which is always been kind
of at the forefront.
When you think about your role as the LPGA commissioner,
how do you see yourself fitting into that ecosystem of
women's sports?
And if there isn't an ecosystem as you see it,
how can it become more like that?
No, it's an ecosystem.
And I think The thing is, what it's been fantastic
is that we're also supporting each other.
You know, this week is the NWSL Championship in Kansas
City.
The owners of the Kansas City Current are really great
friends of mine.
They're Princetonians, they have done an amazing job of building
that team.
They built a a purpose built stadium.
They have a practice facility.
They're investing in the sport like never before.
And it's, and the, the result is fantastic.
The valuations in the NWSL have skyrocketed the WNBA.
The WNBA has had tremendous exposure with great athletes, great
competition.
So we're all working together.
I mean, we're all friends and we think the rising
tide lives, lifts all boats.
One of my goals as being the commissioner was to
integrate the LPGA more into that ecosystem, the professional sports
ecosystem, but definitely the women's sports ecosystem.
We get together a lot and we say, how do
we support each other?
How do I market what you're doing?
How do you market what I'm doing?
Jessica Berman invited me to the Orlando game this past
weekend.
I was out of town and I would have absolutely
gone.
I'm a huge soccer fan.
You know, I've, I've met with Kathy Engelbert like we're,
we're all in this together.
So I think there is an ecosystem.
I think it's a supportive ecosystem and I love it
when they have success.
You know, Caitlin Clark was with us last week at
at the Annika driven by Cambridge at Pelican and she
was unbelievable.
And the fans were so passionate about her.
Having her playing with Nelly and Annika was like everything
we dreamed of, you know, And I think it really
is elevating all sports.
Well, Speaking of elevation, eyeballs you mentioned are important for
the WNBA.
They had I think some 54,000,000 unique viewers this year.
It's been a huge boom for them.
You've got stars like Nelly Corda, like Lydia Coe, like
Charlie Hull, who are kind of the ambassadors for your
brand now, amongst many.
They're just a few of them.
Is there a strategy that the LPGA is looking towards
for the future of distribution?
We talk so much about streaming.
All the major sports networks have some kind of a
streaming strategy.
What exactly does media in the future look like for
the LPGA?
Yeah, I think one of our big investment points is
getting more people to produce more content.
I mean, it's it's a much more complex strategy than
that.
But at the core of it is you have to
put content out there.
Content is king, so we have invested.
We have 35% more people in our marketing comms departments
and we saw it Solheim Cup.
When you have people there and they can capture our
amazing athletes, like Nellie on the first tee was was
magic.
You know, the way she was getting the crowd going,
the smiles on her face that just went viral didn't
help.
You know, didn't hurt that we had former President Barack
Obama there, we had Jessica Alba there, we had Elena
Kagan there, you know, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.
Like there was energy there, but we had people there
to catch that content.
And then we can put it out on our channels
and it can get get on.
You know, it goes viral that way.
So I think #1 is just having more people to
capture the amazing content that's happening.
We also have just had a new website that has,
you know, sort of we go user sign on, we
know who our customers are.
We're trying to get more customers in and then we're
trying to communicate with those customers on a two way,
you know, basis where we have a new deal with
ESPN Plus.
This is the second year of that where we have
featured groups where people can not only watch the broadcast
with Golf Channel or NBC or CBS, but they can
also catch the behind the scenes content and feature groups,
you know, and be able to watch their favorite players
on the events that we're doing.
We want to grow that.
I mean, there's just, you know, we have way more
marketing going on.
We never really had data.
We're collecting our data through our partnership with Siki.
We know who they are.
We know the demographics.
We're constantly telling them what's happening, sending them feedback, sending
them to our events.
I mean, it's a full strategy because I think that's
the key.
We just need more people to know our athletes.
We need people to really engage with our content.
So it's a, it's a very deliberate and intentional strategy.
Takes a little while, but we're getting there.
At Solham Cup, we had 42 million views.
We had 42,000,000 engagements that the average number this year
has gone from 4 million a couple years ago, 7
million last year.
The average is over 10 million a week of people
engaging with our content.
That's what we need to keep doing and we need
to use all the resources that we have to get
there.
Sounds like an optimistic scenario for the LPGA Tour.
Molly Marcus, Simon, thank you so much for joining us
on CNBC.
We appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.